Mumbai Se Aaya Mera Dost-1

My recent visit to India was wonderfully gratifying and deeply disturbing all at the same time. I was shooting a documentary film and got to witness a part and people of Bombay that I hadn't scrutinized before.

These faces and places had been lost to the busy commute and bustling crowds when I lived in the city some years ago but as we focused our lenses on them, they became more and more interesting and the crowd fell away. What stood out then, is the medley of contradictions that Bombay has now become.

Odd juxtapositions are now more noticeable than ever. Tall skyscrapers fringed by an abysmal slum area, large malls coming up beside rows of chawls and glitzy showrooms right next to the humble furniture workshops that work in the light of a single yellow bulb. Bombay's own sophisticated versions of Costco towers above harassed heads of the city's loyal bhaaji-wallahs and vendors. Simple, cotton kurtas hang forlorn from the street shanties at Linking Road and Dadar, the mirrors and sequins on their soft fabric winking at the spotless windows of a shopping center where similar ones are sold at thrice the price.

I heave a sigh of relief on noticing that the pav-bhaaji shack is still intact beside a brand new Pizza Hut. In the United States, McDonald's is a fast-food chain and in Bombay it is a family restaurant where people eat a less delectable version of the city's staple "vada-paav" for at least ten times its price.

While the middle class struggles for basic amenities, the malls have twenty-four hours of electricity and running water. On the day of a power outage, these malls stand magnificently lit up, their rich and arrogant frames looking down on the darkness of the city.

The chasm between the rich and the poor has widened dangerously and the pit of crime that bridges the two, threatens to swallow the frustrated. There are street kids doing drugs on railway bridges and rich brats doing drugs in dim lit discotheques. Kamathipura continues to exist like a parallel city mocking those of us who still believe in the power of the legal system.

How inured have we become, I wonder, as I watch children frolicking on a swing tied to the pillars of the busy Andheri flyover. By the time one flyover is done being constructed, work will begun on yet another and Bombay will always move in slow motion while contractors and political moghuls pull in the riches. There is an upside to all of this. The poor then find a new concrete roof above their heads. One day, the monsoons arrive like they did last year on 26th July and flood these lives, trying in their own cruel way to purge the city.

When I want to click pictures of a wide-eyed street child I am glared at.

"Why don't you click pictures of the Taj, Madam?" a man asks me, "Why you want Amrikka to see beggars?" he chides, as he fills paper cones with spiced gram and chopped onions.

"Channa chor garam," he calls out to passers-by and if it weren't for my intolerance of denial, I realize, I probably would've been thoroughly impressed by his sense of pride.

Our driver who witnesses this exchange has an entirely different take. He shakes his head vehemently as he pulls the car deftly in and out of potholes, barely missing the rickshaw ahead.

"Who cares if Amrikka sees the rip in our vest?" he snaps matter of factly, wiping his brow, "We know it is torn, no? We hide the hole and ignore it, it keeps getting wider. Nahin madam?" he asks me and I am stirred by his profound analogy.

I hear people brag about the technological advances even as the city's youth sleeps through the day and wakes up at night to disappear into call centers. I see them in Tata Sumos and Qualises, huddled, waiting to get to their night shift. I hear people proudly declare that India is turning into a hub for clinical research even as my heart sinks with the realization that a "hub for clinical research" for pharmaceutical companies translates to "a country with a large population and plenty disease for drug trials". Not something to be proud of, is it?

The one bearing in which the curve of economic status collapses is in a traffic jam, the city's greatest equalizer. The rich in their chaffeur driven cars, the middle class and the poor in the buses, taxis and rickshaws are all trapped in the serpentine queue of bright red, brake lights while traffic policemen wave their hands around inconsequentially for a little while. They then give up and sit back to watch this dazzling evening show ruminating on mouthfuls of tobacco. Nobody gets to work or reaches home on time irrespective of their socio-economic status. The faces at the traffic signal are scattered snippets from Madhur Bhandarkar's last film and there is nothing one can do about them, I am repeatedly told, except look away or roll up my window.

When I voice some of my concerns, wondering if there was something people could do, I am swiftly shushed, reprimanded, my N.R.I arrogance mocked. On the day of my return, I sit in the car on my way to the airport, finally silenced, behind a large, overloaded truck that looks like it could topple over any minute. "Mera Bharat Mahan" ("My India Is Great") it tells me. A noose hangs near it.